San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chis. Preschool, primary and secondary school students, joined by parents, from the municipality of Chapultenango, located in the north of the entity, commemorated World Earth Day this Monday with a march.
The approximately 500 protesters carried “creative banners, headbands and costumes alluding to the care of water and forests,” reported residents of that municipality.
“Drinking water gives us life. Becoming aware will give us water,” the students wrote on one of the many cards they carried.
The Zoque poet, Mikeas Sánchez, one of the organizers of the demonstration, stated that “it is very important to commemorate World Earth Day because although it was thought of by the United Nations Organization (UN), we in the communities, at least In Chapultenango, we have appropriated it as a pretext to establish ourselves in the care of the territory and there is no better way to take care of it than by reminding ourselves every day that we are part of the earth.”
He said that “World Mother Earth Day is a big holiday; It should be a super party in every town, in every city, throughout the world because we are celebrating life, celebrating that we are here on this planet that gives us life, water, food, sustains us, receives us.”
In an interview, he added that “when we are gestating in our mother’s womb, which is also shaped like an earth because it is round, and when we leave it and another place receives us, which is the earth, it is a second mother who has everything here for us.” what we are going to experience in the world.”
He reiterated that “it is very important to think that we are part of the earth and that we live here only a portion of life; that surely when we are no longer here, when they plant us, when the earth receives us again we will have another life because we believe that there is another life, that this does not end, that there is a cycle. So, we have to think that we pass from the womb of the mother who gives us to the world and gives us to mother earth and they will give us to another place that we do not know.”
He stressed: “We want to remember that we are part of the earth and it should be a big party. What a shame that few people know that this day exists.”
Sánchez commented that this is the fifth year that World Earth Day has been commemorated in Chapultenango. “It’s nice because we meet people who are raising awareness and above all we do it with schools, with children, adolescents and young people, they understand that it is the place they live in and they have to take care of it, protect it and respect it.”
He said that students from the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Preschool, the Francisco I. Madero Federal Primary School and the Telesecundaria 051 Juan Escutia participated in the march through the main streets of Chapultenango, as well as staff from the city council, the Defensoras de Nasakobajk collective and inhabitants of the community.
